Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  Cady eyed her new friend with suspicion. “What did you say?”

  “No, try and tell me what you heard! That’s the fun of it, like playing telephone.” Nikos popped on his toes with excitement.

  “It didn’t work, just tell me.”

  Nikos checked over his shoulder and leveled his gaze. “I said, ‘Professor Hines is a wanker.’ Not my best material, but I didn’t think I’d bomb this badly.”

  “Sorry.” She gave a weak smile. “I didn’t hear it.”

  “Then I could’ve gotten away with saying much worse.”

  She searched his face again. “Is that a joke?”

  “Of course it is! A better one if it had actually worked, I don’t know what went wrong. What did you say?”

  “I said ‘Hello,’ ” Cady lied.

  “‘Hello?’ Well that’s bloody boring! I was hoping you’d say something flirtatious.” Nikos smirked.

  But Cady, like the afternoon, had cooled. “I’ve got to get back to my room.”

  “Oh, before you go, I want to invite you to a party at the Phoenix, I’m a member—”

  “Sure, maybe.”

  “Right. I’ll text you the info.”

  She nodded and began walking across the Yard to her dorm.

  “And we’ll have to give the archway another try!” Nikos called after her.

  But Cady didn’t look back. Instead, she quickened her step and pulled her jacket more tightly around her, the words echoing in her mind:

  It takes only an error to father a sin.

  If Nikos really hadn’t said it, who had?

  6

  The Science Center was the ugliest building on campus, a boxy structure made of concrete and glass tiers in a stairstep formation, like some sort of ziggurat to academia. It encompassed Cabot Science Library, open twenty-four hours, and housed world-renowned physicists, mathematicians, and masters of every scientific field. The Science Center could afford to be ugly, because the people in it were that smart.

  Well, not all of them, Cady thought as she nearly tripped whirling through the revolving door, I’m here. A sense of dread pooled at the pit of her stomach upon entering the main lobby. Perhaps it was her introduction to the place; the first time she was inside had been her mathematics placement exam on her second day—part of Harvard’s less-than-welcoming Freshman Week. Or maybe it was just her insecurities about math and science—Eric’s specialties, not hers. She preferred history, literature, and other fields open to interpretation.

  Thankfully, the only business she had there today was Psych 100, which had quickly become one of her favorite classes. Professor Bernstein was energetic and charismatic, and as a result, the popular course was packed; it was held in one of the building’s biggest lecture halls with seating for three hundred, and latecomers still had to sit in the aisles. Cady had missed breakfast that morning, and with a little under a half hour before lecture was set to begin, she figured she’d grab a bite at the Science Center food court, known as the Greenhouse Café, or just Greenhouse. At this hour, they were just starting to prep for lunch, and Cady’s stomach growled at the aroma of pizza baking. She walked to the refrigerated section to grab a yogurt and spotted several rows of packaged sushi. Cady remembered Eric talking about his ‘science sushi’ he ate for lunch everyday—her parents had argued with him over spending money on it instead of making use of the residential dining plan. Cady had teased him about the wisdom behind eating raw fish from a food court, to which he’d shrugged: “Builds immunity.”

  She grabbed a package of the spicy tuna roll and got in line at the checkout counter, a small island of four female cashiers sitting on high stools. When it was Cady’s turn, a short, round ball of a woman waved her arm. “Next! Next over here! Have your swipe card ready.”

  Cady rummaged in her tote bag for her ID, or “swipe card.” A student’s ID acted as an access key and a debit card. “I’m sorry, I know I have it in here.”

  The woman sighed loudly, her thin red lips flattening into a disapproving line and green-shadowed eyelids sinking over her eyes. “That’s why I said ‘Have your swipe card ready,’ ” she said, the word cahd showcasing her thick Boston accent.

  “Sorry, it’ll just take a minute.”

  “You wanna go ahead a’ her?” the cashier asked someone over Cady’s head.

  Cady glanced back and saw that a tall blond woman was waiting behind her. “It’s fine, I’m in no hurry,” the woman answered.

  “Ah! Here it is.” Cady whipped out her card in triumph and handed it over.

  “Ahrcher?” The cashier squinted at her ID. “Your last name is Ahrcher?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shoulda known!” the cashier cried, suddenly warm and smiling. “You gotta brother who goes here, don’t you!”

  “Yes, my brother went here.” The cashier hadn’t asked it like a question, so Cady figured maybe it didn’t need a straight answer.

  “The sushi, the total discombobulation, just like him.” The cashier chuckled. “But the red hair’s the giveaway. You’re a dead ringer.”

  Cady tried not to cringe.

  “He’s my buddy! He comes here, always gets the same thing, never has his swipe card.” The cashier leaned in. “I cut him some slack and type him in as faculty, that way he still gets the discount. Last year, he helped me with my Sudoku on my breaks, taught me all sorts of tricks. Before him, I could only do the easy-level books. Now?” She paused for effect. “Hahd.”

  Cady smiled. “That’s cool. Eric has a great head for puzzles.”

  The cashier gave a hoot. “More than that! He’s genius smaht, your brother, even for this school. Always with his notebooks during lunch. You must be wicked smaht too.”

  “Not like him.” It was the first honest thing Cady had said.

  “Don’t be like that.” The cashier waved her off. “All you girls are like that. You don’t got the swagger of the boys. Believe it, hon, you’re here, you’re smaht.” She handed Cady her receipt and ID back. “Your brother hasn’t come see me yet this fall. He graduate last year?”

  “Yeah, graduated,” Cady said, avoiding her eyes. “Now there’s just me.”

  “Well, I’m Eileen. You tell Eric hello from me.”

  Cady had been seated at a café table for only a few minutes when the blond woman from the line approached her, holding a tray.

  “Pardon me, but I couldn’t help overhearing in the line, you are Eric Archer’s sister?” She spoke with unusual precision.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I teach in the Physics Department. Sadly, I know that Eric did not graduate. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Cady’s face flushed, busted. “Thank you.”

  “He was one of my favorite students, and truly brilliant. He had so much potential, to think what he might have accomplished …” Emotion flickered in the woman’s eyes, but she blinked it away. “I didn’t know he had a sister who was a student here. Your name?”

  “I’m Cadence.”

  The woman reached out her hand, which was faintly purple in comparison to the rest of her alabaster skin, as if it might be cool to the touch. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said as they shook hands. “May I join you?”

  “Of course. But I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Oh, because I didn’t say it. Forgive me, I’m a math person, words are my second language—and English is my third.” Her smile accentuated her lovely, high cheekbones, and rimless eyeglasses did nothing to diminish pretty gray eyes. “I’m Professor Mikaela Prokop.”

  “Oh—” Cady was taken aback. Of course, she knew the name Professor Prokop, but, for reasons that now felt both stupid and sexist, Cady hadn’t considered that Professor Prokop could be a woman, much less relatively young. “You were Eric’s adviser last year, right?”

  Prokop tucked
her cornsilk hair behind her ear. “I advised him on his project for the Bauer Award, and he worked as my research assistant in my lab. I recognized his talent early. It was hard to miss.”

  That jogged Cady’s memory. She generally tuned out when Eric talked about his schoolwork, since he was too paranoid to share any details with them anyway, but she did recall that Eric had taken that research assistant job seriously. He made that and the Bauer project the cornerstone of his arguments with their parents over taking his medication, which he thought dulled his mental acuity, or, when things got worse, against taking time off school for inpatient therapy. But although his commitment to the research may have made him resistant to treatment, it was the only thing that could lift his spirits in those days. Now she understood that the woman sitting across from her had been there for Eric when his illness was at its worst, giving him something to work toward, to live for, right up until a few months before his passing. A wave of gratitude washed over her.

  “He was so proud to work with you. It was very kind of you to let him stay as long as you did,” Cady said.

  Professor Prokop shook her head, her brow creased. “I kept him on as long as I possibly could. I lost many nights’ sleep over having to drop him as an advisee. I told him to think of it only as a hiatus. How I wish that that was what it had been. I wish I could’ve helped him better.”

  “I’m sure you did all you could, and more than most.” Cady wished she could’ve been as encouraging to her brother as the professor. “Your work together meant a lot to him, and to my family. I’ll tell my mom I ran into you.” Only then she remembered that her mother wasn’t speaking to her.

  “Are you interested in studying physics as well? It is not too late to switch into one of my classes, not for an Archer.”

  “Oh, no, I’m like Eric’s opposite, a humanities type. The subjects with no wrong answers,” Cady joked.

  “You’re describing the entanglement theory, but for siblings. If one particle spins up, clockwise, the other must spin down, counterclockwise. It is a real theory, no matter how close or distant the two particles are, they affect each other significantly. You define yourself in opposition to your brother, and yet look where you are. Not so different, eh? So challenge your hypotheses.” Prokop smiled. “That’s just a little quantum therapy for you. Now, unfortunately, I must go prepare for my next class. It was very good to meet you. Please give your family my sympathies. The department misses Eric very much.”

  Cady said goodbye and watched the professor leave, wishing they could’ve talked longer. Then she sat back and imagined herself and her brother spinning around each other—not opposite, not the same, but entangled.

  Cady entered Lecture Hall C and stretched her neck to scan the upper rows for Ranjoo, like a duckling looking for its mother. This was the only class Cady shared with one of her roommates, and the two of them had quickly developed a routine of sitting together that Cady hoped to upgrade to an actual friendship. She spotted Ranjoo in their usual section, waving to her from the cocoon of an oversized scarf, and joined her.

  “Can I catch up on the three chapters I was supposed to read in the three minutes before class begins?” Ranjoo flipped through the pages of her textbook, silver rings on almost every finger. “Or, better yet, did you do the reading?”

  Cady smirked. “I did.”

  “As always, Queen of Homework comes through!”

  “Happy to help, even if you make me feel very uncool.”

  “Girl, no! You’re on top of your shit. I want to be like you when I grow up! And until then, I want to mooch off your knowledge. So can you give me the headlines?”

  Cady caught her up as best she could before Professor Bernstein appeared. It was a lucky thing Cady was so diligent about her reading, because she had a hard time paying attention to the day’s lecture. Bernstein was his typical entertaining self, but instead of taking notes on her laptop, Cady’s mind wandered back to her conversation with Professor Prokop. Their brief meeting had left her with an unexpected feeling of shame. Prokop had been, without question, a main character in her brother’s daily life on campus, and yet Cady hadn’t even known her gender. At some point, Eric surely mentioned Prokop was a she, but Cady had forgotten, or worse, she hadn’t been listening. It highlighted a fact that Cady preferred to repress: At the end of his life, she and Eric had become strangers. That she was now left to piece together clues from his notes was embarrassing enough, but to make such an obvious mistake … it rubbed salt in the wound. They weren’t always like that. Eric’s leaving for college put literal distance between them, but his freshman year they would email and text often, even talk on the phone occasionally. He was still a part of her life. She had sensed during that first year that he was depressed, he had indicated as much in pessimistic emails, but she hadn’t known what to do about it. When it got worse his sophomore year, his grades faltered, and he shut down. At first, Cady had tried to lay off him, tried to be the one person in the family who wouldn’t ask him questions. But as he’d gotten sicker, they’d argued more when he was home. Cady challenged him on his paranoid theories, even though the therapist had told her it wouldn’t make a difference. She thought if she could just bear down on him, she could unearth the logic that had anchored his intellect for his entire life. But soon she’d grown tired of fighting with him, and she stopped saying anything at all. She told herself she was giving him space, but she had let Eric float away.

  She decided she would get lecture notes from Ranjoo, a favor she could easily repay. Instead, Cady navigated to the Physics Department faculty pages to learn more about Professor Prokop. She looked up her office hours, and she emailed her saying how nice it was to run into her and asking if she could come in and talk a little more about Eric. It took three drafts before Cady felt brave enough to put Prokop’s address in the To: field, and she didn’t click Send until the end of class. But apprehensions aside, it was the first time since she had moved onto Harvard’s campus that Cady felt she had accomplished something.

  Cady and Ranjoo joined the throng of exiting and entering students forced to squeeze through the revolving doors of the Science Center, like competing schools of fish, until finally it was her turn to be spat outdoors into the bright sunlight. Outside, people rushed by all around her. Ranjoo peeled left toward Annenberg, the freshman dining hall, per their post-Psych routine.

  “Should we text Andrea to get lunch with us?” Cady asked. Ranjoo widened her eyes in a way Cady knew meant Please don’t. “I know she’s not your favorite.”

  “No, it’s fine, go ahead.” Ranjoo sighed. “I suppose I have to get used to her.”

  Cady preferred Ranjoo and didn’t want to irritate her, but something about Andrea tugged at her heartstrings. She was fishing for her phone in her bag when suddenly she felt its vibration in her coat pocket. She was getting an incoming call from Home. “Oh, hold on a sec,” she said before answering it, “Hey, Dad, I’m about to go to lunch—”

  “Honey, it’s Mom.”

  “Oh. Oh, hi.” Cady stopped in her tracks. It was the first time her mother had called her since she had moved in. Every night she went to bed hoping her mother would call, but she hadn’t. Just how much she missed her mother came crashing over her at this moment, and she was terrified of screwing it up.

  “How are you? Is it a bad time?”

  “No, I—” She met Ranjoo’s questioning gaze and waved her on ahead. “It’s fine, I’m fine. How’s home?”

  “Empty.”

  Cady felt touched. “I miss—”

  “Are you making friends?” her mother spoke over her.

  “I like my roommates. One is really cool, Ranjoo, we just had a class together. And I met a good friend of Eric’s, a British guy named Nikos.”

  “Nikos? I don’t remember him, but I forget everything lately. How did you find him?”

  She saw no need to tell her mom about her auditio
n stakeout. “He found me, actually. He recognized my name and introduced himself.”

  “That’s so nice.”

  Cady heard her mother sniffle, and her heart sank. She decided not to tell her about meeting Professor Prokop, either. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s nice to meet people who knew him. It’s supportive. It’s nicer being here than you thought.” It wasn’t true yet, but she needed it to be.

  “That’s good.” Her mother seemed to collect herself. “And how’s your mental state?”

  “What do you mean?” Cady tensed up, sensing where this conversation was headed. “Mom, it’s normal to have some anxiety about being at college for the first time.”

  “I know, the transition to college for the first time is a huge one, for anyone, under any circumstances. And these aren’t normal circumstances. You’re fragile right now.”

  “We all are, we’re grieving. It’s normal not to feel completely normal.”

  “Cady, you had a major episode—”

  “That was once!” Cady shot back. “It was an accident, I mean—it was an emotional day. And I’ve apologized.”

  “I’m not blaming you, in fact I wish we had done more for you this summer. I’m afraid you haven’t dealt with—”

  “I deal with it every day! It’s awful, it’s hard, but at least I’m trying. I’m going to school, I’m living my life, I’m moving on. What more can I do?”

  “But at Harvard? I still think it’s too much for you.”

  That touched a nerve. Deep down, Cady didn’t believe her mother ever thought she could get into a school like this, even when her brother was alive. She saw her son as the genius, her daughter the hard worker. Her mother’s doubt irked Cady all the more because she often shared it. “I can handle it. Today I nailed my choir audition, I made a friend, and my seminar professor told me he would never forget my name. So actually, I’m doing great.”

  “Good. I’m truly glad to hear it, that’s why I called.”

  Cady tried not to give herself away with tears.